In the port of Amsterdam

June 18, 2006

1–2 minutes

The Fourth International has changed since my day. The ability to snore at the same volume as a small tractor seems to have become one of the conditions of membership. I was invited to Amsterdam to take part in a seminar on new mass parties in Europe and I now probably know enough about the history of Norwegian Maoism to make me a world class expert. However it meant sharing a room with five other comrades and by god they can snore. It’s alright if you’ve had enough drink to put you into a deep sleep. Last night though I didn’t and could have committed mass murder at three in the morning.

The most interesting part of the discussion was on Italy. I’m afraid that since Fausto Bertinotti and Romano Prodi are among my regular readers that I’ll have to be slightly evasive on what the Italian comrades are doing. Theirs is an interesting problem. They hold the balance of power in the government and there will shortly be a vote in the parliament on keeping Italian troops in Afghanistan. Prodi wants to make this into a confidence vote. If he does this gives the Italian comrades the choice of voting for an imperialist war or voting against the government, bringing it down and probably allowing Berlusconi back into power. I suspect that principle will win out over expediency.

Their work in Rifondazione has put them in a very favourable position. After a period in which they were part of the leadership majority, when the party was moving leftwards they are now back where they started as a left opposition to the leadership but with a much wider range of support gathered around Sinistra Critica.

I’ll add more detail about this and some other countries later in the week and will also put up a transcript of Jeremy Dear’s report back from the TUC delegation to Venezuela which will be in the next issue of SR.

2 responses to “In the port of Amsterdam”

Mark P

June 19, 2006 at 1:14 pm

The other way of looking at it: After a period where they lost their bearing entirely and became essentially indistinguishable from the reformist leadership around Bertinotti, they have recoiled somewhat when faced with a big shift to the right by that leadership. That’s to be welcomed, I suppose, and it probably has something to do with the object lesson in political degradation provided by the Brazilian USFI majority in recent years. In the face of that particular set of betrayals it is presumably difficult for anyone to justify the USFI’s recent practice of accomodating themselves to the leadership of reformist parties. Where such behaviour leads has become rather too obvious.I’d be interested in hearing what was said about new mass parties more generally though. I presume that these were meetings about the potential for new mass parties rather than about actual new mass parties, because I can’t think of any with even semi-mass status beyond perhaps the Dutch Socialist Party. What for instance was said about Germany? I know that there are two small rival USFI groups there. One seems to be adopting a rather sectarian “build the revolutionary party” stance and ignoring developments in the PDS and WASG. The other seems to be more of a discussion circle than a disciplined group but it appears after a period of ambivalence to have moved its position towards that of the WASG left.

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Liam Mac Uaid

June 19, 2006 at 7:59 pm

The Italians are in no doubt that Rifondazione is reformist. The time when they were in the party majority coincided with the big mobilisations around Genova and their aftermath in which Rifondazione didn’t behave like the PCI but was much more responsive to the mass movement. As it moved to the right they found themselves in open confrontation with the leadership. This is now widely reported in the Italian press.As for Brazil I can’t speak for the FI but everyone I know who is a member has made very harsh criticisms of what the comrades there did. They have done this in private and in public and I find this one of the current’s strengths.The RSB in Germany strike me as sectarian and dogmatic. The ISL’s members are heavily involved in the WASG but they are numerically weak and seem to be overstretching themselves.My time is limited this week but I do intend to write something fuller, as much to clarify my own ideas as anything else.

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Liam redux